Ecosystem – Guide

Guide for Ecosystem – Guide

Reduce Ecosystem Lag / FPS Drop

Thank you for visiting this guide. Please leave feedback and suggestions and I will update the guide to include any new information we have. -Stobz0 
 
Why This Guide? 
-Useful with slower systems or to run for extended periods of time 
-Ecosystem uses GPU 3D heavily for physics calculations and will also stress your CPU, if you do not have a good video card and processor, expect to run lower populations 
 
Standard Items to Try First: 
1. Update system, drivers, Steam, Ecosystem 
2. Fully reboot system 
3. Close all other non critical applications on your computer 
4. Disable antivirus or put into game mode (disable at your own risk) 
 
Ecosystem Game Specific: 
 
1. KIS – Keep It Simple 
Start simple and build up after confirming your system isn’t going to stall out at X population. 
Until you know how your system reacts to the game’s processing needs especially over time, 
 
2. Map Type 
Use a Creative Map rather than a Game Map. Plants do not seed/multiply in Creative so this is less for the system to process, plants also auto respawn in Creative so you don’t have to worry about them going extinct. 
 
3. Map Food 
Start simple, and don’t plant kelp or plankton. In Creative kelp does not take over but plankton tends to collect in them. Plankton has been speculated as causing lag in different circumstances especially over time. 
 
4. Map File Size 
Large game save files are bad. The larger the game save file, the longer it will take to load, in general the more poor the performance once it is loaded (due to number items in game), and very large files are unlikely to load at all. File size is primarily if not entirely based on number of items on the map. If you have a map you really want to save but it’s coming out too large, try deleting plants and creatures to reduce the file size. 
 
Game File Size Tips: 
20-30MB – Fantastic ! 
30-40MB – Good 
40-50MB – Ok 
50-60MB – Meh 
60-70MB – Maybe 
70-80MB – Might load, cross fingers 
80MB+ – Most likely will not load 
 
5. System Graphics 
Reduce in game Graphics setting to lowest, lower resolution, set FPS at 30FPS. 
 
6. System Memory 
The game leaks some memory (may be fixed/improved as of v16/v17). If running the game for an extended time, save the game (check the file size before exiting), exit game, restart game. Depending on the saved game size you may easily see game memory usage reductions such as 8GB to 4GB (Running the game over night on a system with 64GB RAM I have found the gaming using 20GB+. This will eventually result in a crash when your system runs out.) 
 
7. System CPU / GPU 
Enable FPS display in Steam. Monitor your FPS vs CPU and GPU (3D specifically) usage in task manager as your map becomes more populated (fish, plants, plankton, everything counts). Ecosystem uses the GPU to calculate physics. 
 

Lish, a Land Fish Above Water Guide

Thank you for visiting this guide. Please leave feedback and suggestions and I will update the guide to include any new information we have. -Stobz 
 
Land + Fish = Lish 
 
***NOTE: 
-Tom the developer has said that he is not currently making it a priority to patch the “Lish bug”. 
-<Caution> This fun “feature” could go away at any time. 
-Making land, fish, and plants on land above the water surface is not currently a normal intended feature of the game, and as such you SHOULD expect odd and unexpected results ! This is half of the fun 🙂 
 
* * * News Alert * * * 
– – – Ecologists have recently discovered that fish have evolved to live on land ! – – – 
Good luck, and be sure to join the Ecosystem Discord and share your LISH ! 
 
How to Lish: 
1. Select <F1> – Terrain Menu 
2. Select <1> – Raise 
3. Select soil type 
4. Water.Soil Spire to Surface: 
a. Hover a little above the ocean floor 
b. Face straight down 
c. Center the mouse, left click and hold to raise the soil 
d. While continuing to hold left click and face down, press and hold E to move your camera towards the surface. You can try using Shift to go up faster. 
(If you are too close to the floor, you will get stuck in the soil you just placed. To unstick, click on the minimap) 
e. If your soil spire stops being built or goes wild, simply release left click to stop placing soil, go back down to the top of your spire, and continue. It can take a little practice to do this quickly. 
f. The game will stop you once you reach the surface. 
 
5. Surface.Ramp: 
a. Move back so the gap between the top of the spire and the surface is in front of you and continue to build the spire up to and slightly above the surface. 
b. Find or create a soil ramp spot that is at less sharp of an angle, and move your camera forward into the soil and water surface while pressing E to go up. The camera will pop up above the water surface. 
 
6. Surface.Land: 
a. Create your surface land as you like. Plants appear to function normally. 
b. Note: You can NOT fly freely through the air as you did in the water. Build a raised hill on the island that you can climb and see your area. Once at that height you can move forward off the hill and stay at that height until you go down using Q normally or press E and gravity will sink you to the land/water surface you are above. Careful this is a pain when you are used to moving in all directions. 
 
7. Surface.Fish: 
a. Good Luck, this has been the most difficult part yet. Fish do not spawn well above the surface and tend to “leak” through the land back into the water. If they do end up spawning on top of the land, you need to try to have walls around the island to keep them from flopping back into the water. Another way that <[email protected] Jenkins> discovered to keep them on their island is to keep predators in the surrounding waters. 
 

FAQ

Common Questions Terms Etc 
 
This list has just started, please add your comments with questions and answers to add to the list. 
-Stobz0 
 
Genetic Disease- 
This is the game’s term for the physics simulation getting out of control, causing very unrealistic movement and exploding (we’ve all seen ragdolls freak out in games, it’s that kind of thing). 
 
Fog in Distance- 
DanPos [developer] Apr 13 @ 5:44am 
The fog is primarily there to help reduce the GPU usage of the game, work is underway to optimize it so we can remove the fog effect no ETA on when that would be done though. 
 
Game Save / Map Sharing / Mods- 
https://www.nexusmods.com/ecosystem 
 
Youtube- 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoBEF8oigMIrhIj14J0x24g 
 
Instagram- 
https://www.instagram.com/quasitriangular 
 
Facebook- 
https://www.facebook.com/EcosystemGame 
 
Ecosystem Game Website- 
https://ecosystem-game.com 
 
Ecosystem Game Website Blog- 
https://ecosystem-game.com/blog/ 
 
Twitter- 
https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame 
 
Slug Disco – Ecosystem Forum- 
https://forum.slugdisco.com/index.php?categories/ecosystem.26 
 
Steam Store- 
https://www.nexusmods.com/ecosystem” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer” >https://www.nexusmods.com/ecosystem 
 
Youtube- 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoBEF8oigMIrhIj14J0x24g 
 
Instagram- 
https://www.instagram.com/quasitriangular 
 
Facebook- 
https://www.facebook.com/EcosystemGame 
 
Ecosystem Game Website- 
https://ecosystem-game.com 
 
Ecosystem Game Website Blog- 
https://ecosystem-game.com/blog/ 
 
Twitter- 
https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame 
 
Slug Disco – Ecosystem Forum- 
https://forum.slugdisco.com/index.php?categories/ecosystem.26 
 
Steam Store- 
https://slugdisco.com/press/sheet.php?p=ecosystem 
 

Game Change Log

This section will house a quick reference list of the Ecosystem Game change log and links to the full release notes. -Stobz0 
 

 
16th April 2021 
Patch Notes 
v0.17 
Link: Full Notes & Developers Update 
 
CHANGES 
Prevent unpredictable plant die-offs that were resulting from forager overfeeding by increasing the plant time-scale. 
Automatically clean up small floating remnants that can be left after digging. 
Minimap: allow toggling terrain, plant and creature display. 
Minimap: legend supports 20 species instead of 10. 
 
PERFORMANCE 
Improve efficiency of target-seeking AI, which became worse the more creatures there were. 
Fix performance degradation when food source placement menu is visible. 
Fix poor performance after loading a saved game. 
Fix excessive memory usage by procedural materials used for creature skins. 
 
BUGS 
Fix issue where saved dna can get its food source set to ‘any’, which results in it never maturing (included in hotfix to v0.16). 
Fix issue where the player can change the timescale while the game is paused. 
Fix issue where creatures’ current behaviors were not loaded but instead recalculated. 

 
26th March 2021 
Patch Notes 
v0.16 
Link: Full Notes 
 
CHANGES 
Forward button now moves where the camera is facing instead of keeping the same depth. 
Add some mouse options to controls menu. 
Replace on/off sliders with buttons in options menu. 
Update demo to match current version of full game. 
 
BUGS 
Fixed issue where off-screen pointer could stay on after you deselected a creature. 
You can no longer click and drag the loading screen progress bar. 
Fix issue where the follow camera in the neural display can start very far away from the creature. 
Fix issue where when you exit neural display, you warp back to where you were before instead of staying in the same place. 
Fix bug where graphics settings were not saved if you exited with escape instead of clicking the button. 
Fix bug where, when you click the ‘Reset’ button, the target framerate is set to infinity instead of the monitor’s refresh rate. 
Fix potential crash in rare case when loading saves. 

 
19th March 2021 
Patch Notes 
v0.15 
Link: Full Notes 
 
Hi all 
 
Thanks again for the wonderful reception to Ecosystem so far! As a one man dev team Tom is hard at work filtering through all the feedback from everyone. 
 
As a priority we are pushing out a small patch which includes the following features and changes. 
 
FEATURES 
UI is now adaptive and should be easier to read on 1440p and 4K monitors. 
 
CHANGES 
Rename ‘Refraction’ to ‘Water Effect’ – this should allow players to more easily identify the setting that turns off the water effect. 
Defaulted water effect value to 0.5 instead of 1.0 for new players – hitting reset still defaults to 100, this will be changed in the next patch. 
Improve visibility of plant buttons. 

 
17th March 2021 
Patch Notes 
v0.14 
Link: Full Notes 
 
HOTFIX v0.14 – Fix for Creature Placement Issue – 
A fix for a rare but game breaking bug 
Thank you everyone who has been waiting patiently for this – this hotfix brings the game to version 0.14, and it fixes the spawning issue that was appearing intermittently on launch. Formal patch notes are as follows: 
 
Fixed an issue where it sometimes became impossible to place new creatures despite having met the preconditions & having enough life points 

 
16th March 2021 
Early Access Release 
CONGRATULATIONS TO TOM AND EVERYONE THAT MADE THIS GAME POSSIBLE ! 

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